


if you only look around, you will be found

by MaddieandChimney



Series: Triggers [8]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mentions of past domestic violence, Panic Attack, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 16:08:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29048943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddieandChimney/pseuds/MaddieandChimney
Summary: It's just a song, she tries to tell herself, but it takes her right back to the life she had once shared with a man she wishes she could forget.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Maddie Buckley, Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han
Series: Triggers [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1765093
Comments: 18
Kudos: 34





	if you only look around, you will be found

**Author's Note:**

> In response to a Tumblr Prompt: “Tell me what’s wrong” Madney or BuckSibs. Can’t remember if you’ve done any trigger stories. I have a ton of PTSD triggers myself, even years later, and one of them is a specific song. On my rewatch, it occurred to me that in FF, when they are dancing, the Sam Cooke song is playing as she shatters the glass. While it stops for us as an audience, in actuality it would have kept playing under that whole scene and whatever came afterwards. Maybe you can do one where that song is a trigger for her.

The panic sets in immediately, despite the smile on both her brother’s and her fiance's faces. Somehow, she’s not standing in the kitchen of the home she shares with Chimney anymore, she’s not laughing and joking with her two favourite men as they go through the possible list of songs for their wedding. She hasn’t heard it in years, the feeling of dread consuming her from the moment she hears that beautiful voice of Sam Cooke sounding through her home. 

_ If I go a million miles away, I’d write a letter each and every day ‘cause honey, nothing… nothing can ever change this love I have for you.  _

It had been so long since her last panic attack, it’s almost as though she’d forgotten. Almost. The way it doesn’t even feel like her body or her mind even belongs to herself or how she can hear and feel her blood pumping as she stumbles away from the kitchen counter, putting some distance between herself and the two men she can barely recognise right then. She tries to remember everything that Frank had gone through with her, all the training she’d had as a nurse on post traumatic stress and triggers and panic attacks. She tries so very hard to tell herself that what she’s feeling, whilst valid, isn’t  _ real _ . 

She isn’t in Hershey. She isn’t with Doug. She has nothing to fear. She’s not going to get hurt. She isn’t going to worry about dying whilst simultaneously hoping for it.

“Turn it off.”

_ You’re the apple of my eye, you’re cherry pie and, oh yeah, you’re cake and ice cream.  _

The music cuts off almost immediately and the silence should be comforting but through blurred vision, it’s not Chimney or Buck that she can see but… the man who’s been dead for five years. It’s not fair, is her immediate thought, it’s not fair that he had stolen so much of her life from her and even in his death, he was still doing it. Still there. Still very much present, mostly in the back of her mind but when he was at the forefront… it was crushing. Trauma isn’t linear, it isn’t simple or even explainable sometimes but she can’t stop the self-loathing from building up inside of her for just not being  _ over _ him or the person she used to be or anything that happened. Not really. 

She can feel it lingering in the back of her mind when she watches Chimney with their daughter and finds herself remembering how terrified she had been the very first time she had held a pregnancy test in her hands when she was twenty-five. She feels it sometimes in the way Chimney touches her, how once… she couldn’t even trust a gentle, loving hand against her cheek because it could be easily replaced with pain a few seconds later. Doug is dead but sometimes, it’s hard to remember that. Sixteen years of her life was a long time and a few years of just being loved in such a special way couldn’t erase it, even if she longed for every touch, every declaration of love, every kiss, every kind word to somehow make up for the years she spent married to someone who took more pleasure in making her hurt than he ever had in making her smile. 

_ “The problem is, Maddie, you never learn.”  _

Maddie can feel her back hitting the counter behind her, the tension in her chest growing with each passing second and the song has stopped but somehow, she can still hear it playing in the background. Each word sung accuentated by the feeling of Doug’s hands on her. Every word feeling more ironic than the last, conflicted by the sound of her husband telling her that if she had just been more careful, he wouldn’t have to do this. 

_ But if you wanted to leave me and roam, when you’d got back, I’d just say welcome home ‘cause honey nothing, nothing, nothing can ever change this love I have for you.  _

She feels as though she’s going to throw up, the world spins and she can’t breathe. She had been laughing and joking barely five minutes ago as her brother had flicked from one song to the next as she and Chimney played along, as though they hadn’t already picked what song they wanted their first dance to be to (a beautiful acoustic version of Islands in the Stream). Now Maddie regrets not making him stop when he’d tried to suggest Hopelessly Devoted to You.

He’s dead but right then, he feels more real than he has in a long time. The grounding technique that so often words doesn’t quite seem to be hitting home right then - she’s at the home she shares with Chimney, she’s with the two men who make her feel safest in the whole world, her daughters are playing in the next room. It doesn’t work. She’s in Hershey, in the home she shared with her husband, curled up on the ground as that song continues to play in the background. It’s barely a few minutes long but somehow, it feels as though it goes on forever. 

Maddie feels herself sinking down onto the floor, pressing her hands over her ears as she sobs. It’s just a song, she tries to herself, over and over again. It’s just a song, one she had once loved so much. It’s just a song that had been playing in the background of one of the most terrifying moments of her life. She had learned a lesson that day, for sure, she just wasn’t sure what beyond the fact that, from that moment on, all Doug had to do was  _ look _ at the remaining wine glasses and it would cause her body to tremble with the intensity of which she had to hold back the tears. And he knew that, he knew the power he had, the associations she had made with him and those damn wine glasses she loathed so much from the day they had married. 

_ Nothing can ever change the love I have for you.  _

Neither Buck or Chimney touch her but she feels them sliding down onto the kitchen floor on either side of her with enough space between her and them that she doesn’t feel overwhelmed. Her chest is on fire, a desire to pick herself up from the ground, just as she had done over five years ago when she had run to LA in the first place being the only thing in the world right then that drives both of her hands from covering her ears, blindly reaching out for her brother and the man who would be her husband in three months. 

The warmth of their hands in her own brings a momentary wave of relief, digging her nails into the back of their hands as she tries to remind herself where she is. It wasn’t her fault. Chipping the glass in the first place, getting lost in Doug’s smile and his eyes, stumbling into the table… it wasn’t her fault. Being pulled back to that moment wasn’t her fault, either, she tries to convince herself. “Talk to us, Maddie.” It’s her brother’s voice that breaks through the sound of her heart thumping in her ears, her breathing rapid and she can  _ see _ him standing in front of her with a smirk on his lips. She would have do better next time, he says, he’s tired of giving her chance after chance to change. She  _ needed _ to be better. 

She can remember agreeing with him as blood poured down her face and a horrific pain pulsated through her body. It takes a moment more for him to fade, feeling Chimney’s thumb gently brushing over her engagement ring, feeling the slight tremble of his hand before she tilts her head to look at him. “Please tell me what’s wrong.” Maddie finds her eyes moving to those of her little brother, tears openly falling down his cheeks, guilt clear in his eyes as his own breath hitches.

Maddie wants to apologise a thousand times over but she knows neither of them will want to hear it. The room stops spinning, the tightness in her chest starts to lessen, the sickness still lingers as she shakes her head, “I just…” She doesn’t know how to explain it; Frank had taught her to be blunt and honest but the words on the tip of her tongue can’t begin to explain the terror she had felt the second that song had started to play. She can’t explain to the man she’s going to marry how she had been so lost in her love for Doug, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her eyes on his, forgetting everything he was as she so often had because she loved him. She loved a man who hurt her and took so much pleasure in doing so and a part of her isn’t sure she will ever understand or forgive herself for it. She can’t begin to explain how… sudden it was that he could change. How he could go from the man with his arms lovingly wrapped around her as they danced on their deck, to the man towering over her with his fist raised and rage on his face. 

How in the midst of a two minute and thirty-five second song, she had been met with the two sides of her husband. The one side that had been reserved mostly for her, in the safety of their home, behind closed doors. There are no words to express any of that, not really, not in a way that will make any sense to anyone other than her. Instead, she closes her eyes and rests her head on Chimney’s shoulder, holding her brother’s hand a little tighter when a sob falls from her lips, wishing, more than anything, that she could just  _ forget _ . 

“You’re safe now.” Without ever knowing the full story, the man who had only ever placed a gentle and loving touch upon her body, pieces the puzzle together, pressing a kiss to the top of her head as he pulls her a little closer.

“I-I’m so sorry, Mads.” Her brother’s voice sounds so broken, and it breaks her heart in return, unable to find the words to tell him that he couldn’t have known and she hadn’t expected him to know. And she also hadn’t expected such a visceral reaction from the song that she hadn’t heard for so long. 

Buck’s hand only drops from hers at the gentle force of which Chimney pulls her onto his lap, wrapping both of his arms around her as he peppers kisses along her cheek, capturing his tears with each kiss, replaced by the ones falling down his face as he holds her close. “I’ll be okay,” She finally finds herself whispering, opening her eyes to look into the face of the man who had given her a whole new life and shown her that none of it was her fault and that love could be kind and patient and… beautiful. “I’m safe now, it was just a memory.” A terrible one, but still… very much in the past, a seemingly different version of herself. “I’m safe.” 

“And loved.” Chimney mumbles, lips against her nose when her eyes flutter back to a close, the pain lingers in her chest, her hand moving up against his chest to try and remind herself how to breathe again as the imaginary hand around her throat lessens and she’s able to truly remind herself that she’s in LA, happy and safe with her new family, so far away from the life she had shared with Doug. 


End file.
